I suggest all enenews ers stock up on survival supplies – generators, fishing gear, seeds, warm clothing, knives, guns, have an escape plan from the city after fallout . In my opinion, the cities in case of bad falllout will be a terrible place to live in while agriculture and hunting may be the chance for survival if government, infrastructure break down.

get out of the city will be first need… I suspect, once shit hits the fan, martial law will be implemented.. we will be gathered in large groups in order to find food and water… I do not think you will survive in a large group. smaller tight knit groups might…

A question. I know that Arnie stated that Japan would be cooked if this structure fell over and the material on the roof hit the ground.
I would like to know the difference between the material being stored on the roof and lying exposed on the ground.
Isn’t the material exposed already? Thanks for any clarification you can supply.

They are talking about the spent fuel rods submerged in the pool water. If the building collapsed, the fuel rods would no longer be under water, but on the ground, where the zirconium cladding would melt ,exposing the radioactive fuel pellets to the air, it would become a molten corium within hours, and nothing/ nobody could cet close enough to do anything… at least for 50 miles around the area would have to be permanently evacuated …

One more strong aftershock would probably bring the pool down… There are Tons of fuel rods in the pool, not to mention the weight of the water and all combined , it’s very rickedy…

Also, it’s a bit of a misnomer that the industry calls spent fuel, “spent”, as if to imply that it’s somehow less radioactive or less dangerous. It’s not “spent” or used up at all. What happens is, that neutron embrittlement causes the zirconium cladding encasing the fuel becomes brittle and opaque to the transfer of neutrons through it. When the neutrons aren’t able to pass freely through the cladding, the fuel rods become very unstable and dangerous. It’s when the risk of uncontrolled fissioning inside the rods becomes too great to continue, that they must replace the fuel rods in the reactor and store them away in spent fuel pools to keep them cool. In that sense, it seems to me that spent fuel must be much more unstable and dangerous than new fuel.

If the spent fuel pools lose the water? Or if the brittle rods all smash into pieces as they hit the ground? Well then we’ll have even more corium on the loose to deal with and we’re talking about a REALLY BIG blob of corium! BIG!

Its during the normal fission process, boiling water and creating power, that the Neutrons bombard all things inside the reactor. Sometimes the Neutrons will ‘hit’ the nucleus of an atom and release a Proton. On a molecular level the fuel rods change from being enriched Uranium to a ‘dirty’(in my words) Plutonium from receiving the extra Neutrons and Protons. Eventually there will be enough Plutonium to necessitate changing the fuel out, then the “spent” fuel can become bombs and such through refinement.
Basically every Nuc plant is a production facility for Plutonium to make bombs…
Add a little “Thoriuim G” from the movie Dr. Strangelove, to the bomb and you’ve got a doomsday device to shroud the Earth and kill EVERYTHING!!

I read something akin to (and I am paraphrasing) that went along the lines of;

“Do not be fooled into thinking nuclear power plants are built to make energy. They’re not. They are built to provide material to make nuclear weapons and the energy created is just a useful side effect.”

And isn’t it ironic that the “side effect” is sold to us as a solution for the Greenhouse Effect? I’m more scared of the stuff that may be lingering in the air, water, and food, than any glacier melt or ozone holes.

Plutonium isn’t a naturally occurring element. It has to be made in a reactor, over the course of months of fission of highly refined Uranium. These “spent” fuel pools are full of Plutonium!

That’s a great scene in the movie. They’re chatting about how to maintain humankind, and how many women each man will ‘have’ to breed with, throwing out the current paradigm of marriage.
Then close with mushroom clouds galore. Gives living in a hole in the ground a kind of bright side.
We’ll be so lucky to know if it’s coming..
Hile….

Dear Charlie: Good critical thinking. Yes, there is debris that continues to lie out in the open, spalling and disintegrating, generating dust. Some may have been picked up by human robots. The term “human robot” is from Chernobyl days since most machinery and computers die when too close to unshielded, highly radioactive material, though maybe the cranes help with this in part. Remember that the big-picture managers seek to minimize, distract, missinform, dumb-down ultimately, desensitize by repeating information incessently–a little differently each time and always, or usually misscontextualized, if contextualized at all, each time. I don’t trust Arnie Gundersen; but there are plausible reasons for which he limits his judgments, insights and contributions, which is always the case with disinformation types. Plausible deniability.

Arnie Gunderson strikes me as the most reliable, trustworthy source of information out there. Haven’t you listened to any of his videos or to his interviews with Dr. Caldicott? Or to anything he has said? How could you possibly characterize Mr. Gunderson’s work as disinformation? Don’t you know what the word means? Sorry, but I don’t buy your argument and furthermore, I suspect your motives.

charlie3, what the apparently well educated members are failing to communicate is that SFP4 contains not only several ‘loads’ worth of spent fuel, but the entire hot ‘load’ of fuel from RPV4 which was placed there during a routine maintenance outage at the time of the quake/tsunami. The popular question here these last few months has been in regard to the whereabouts of coriums 1,2 and 3. The potentially more worrying concern is the little known whereabouts of the fuel from R4 – sleeping alongside the ‘dirty’ old fuel in SFP4 waiting for the next big shake to wake it up and possibly tip it out of bed.

EVACUATE THE PLANET! Fallout will be everywhere and THEY all know it!! God this is just unbelievable what we’re witnessing. UN-FRIGGING-BELIEVABLE! The U.N. and W.H.O are protecting this Industry?!? TIME TO DISMANTLE ALL OF THEM!

Dear Whoopie: I’m pretty sure you mean “evacuate the planet” figuratively and for dramatic effect. However, it’s not that difficult, given even just a few tens of millions of people who know who their enemies are and who are willing to chop from the top, to make change. Of course, concurrent with chopping from the top (figuratively again, for dramatic effect, uh, well, mostly) we must also take control of all media away from despots, everywhere on the planet. Of course, as we see in any revolution, there is no revolution without taking out the heads of militaries and covert orgs, no matter how they defer responsibility and play musical chairs (think CIA post 911). Nothing less than basically what I suggest will do.

This is not a time in history where half measures or “working within status quos” functions. The era of easy lying to ourselves (not ENE’ers) about the need to end human parasitic and exploitative hierarchies and human-focused living in favor of low-ecological footprint global and universal practices, is gone thanks to FukuDai, global warming and masse extinctions. Now, it’s only those who are really trying to lie to themselves who can’t be reached. These must be called out.

You and most in here are among the awake or very awake. I have patience with the rest; but I’m not certain that disintegrating old nuclear power reactors, crazing and falling apart at the seams all over the planet, are as patient.

We need full empowerment of the masses–this is not sloganeering–but true. Full tearing down of hierarchies of exploitation and hoarding-based power with their violent and institutional enforcement organizations (overt/covert) is absolutely necessary in order to create-implement the solutions where they aren’t already known and implemented. There are still solutions actually, to deal with all the catastrophes of the now. The top-down power of the greediest, most psychotic humans must end and be vigilantly maintained by the masses.

Sorry to intrude, as it were – I agree 100 %, and it’s a long “chop” from the top down thru the mutually re-inforcing layers of psychopaths, sociopaths, narcissists, war profiteers, bankers and run-of-the-mill sycophants and enablers so the sooner the “fire” is kindled the better.

1% versus 99% give or take.
Right here and elsewhere on the webz is the peoples’ media.
The pressure of undeniable reality will eventually force the military protectors to turn their backs on the power-elites (one hopes).

I believe so, and it also seems to match other unusual activity such as vehicle movements reported by Nukelchen (sp?) and others on the webcam thread. It may match all that new crane activity reported on Enenews as well.

POTR blog also announced a belief that something significant had occurred recently, though I believe he said it was on Dec. 7 (a mysterious nighttime “training” session that he suspected was actually something real).

I believe there was also an earthquake aftershock on the 5th (the RSOE alert map listed it as being at Fuku Daini, but I believe the two complexes are very close to eachother).

Both of these were discussed on the weekly discussion thread a few days ago.

I speculate that the developing gefuffle at the NRC (Jaczko et al.) might be the political reaction to news of this development. I assume (perhaps incorrectly) that all governments have known about this before the media picked it up.

GREEN glow at Reactors 3 and 4, bright “work lights” all started around Dec 5th time frame..or shortly after. Think the bloggers here got it right..something is going on NEW at Fukushima around reactors 3 and 4..that the government is trying to coverup..helocopter flights over, increased gas releases and flashes, blue lights/fog, work lights, cranes lifting items and more. Just have to keep eyes on the site and document..eventually..hope someone in the international community finally comes to their senses and takes over keeping the nuclear fallout IN Japan, not letting it pour into the ocean and air to polute us all.

Yes…many speculated. I just knew in my gut that the Europe cloud was from Japan. Why? Because other plants do leak, but Daiichi is a raging triple volcano, a Krakatoa unleashed by the the Dr. Frankensteins of the nuclear mafia.

If radiation were visible there would be no doubt where the plume came from and where it is concentrated. Instead it is the invisible Frankenstein’s monster and no torches or incinerators or cement trucks are going to cage the beast.

Yes the earthquake buckled the containment vessel and let the evil Genie out of the bottle. We knew that 9 months ago.

and the rain/cloud cover in the PNW is right on time… we had been expecting sun.. for our 10 day forecast.. changed to cloud cover, with snow flurries.. this seems to be a pattern.. something happens over there and 5 days or so later..
oh and greetings to you sickputer!

Thnaks, Whoopie. I found this mention of 9,000,000 which have been affected by Chernobyl, but stated that 100,000 have died when we know that 1,000.000 have died:

Chernobyl – The World’s Worst Nuclear Power Accident
“ Based on the official reports by the United Nations, up to 9 million people in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia have been affected directly or indirectly by the radiation fallout. The people of the affected areas have received the highest known exposure to radiation in the history of the Nuclear Age, the full consequences of which will not be seen for at least another 50 years. While there are no definitive figures of deaths resulting from the Chernobyl accident, reports vary from zero to over 100,000 fatalities. Since 1986, the rate of thyroid cancer in affected areas has increased ten fold. Specifically, there has been a significant increase in the number of thyroid cancer cases among patients age 15 or younger….”http://www.wagingpeace.org/menu/action/urgent-actions/chernobyl/

Thank you for posting this. It would seem that everybody knows how massive the effects of Chernobyl were except TPTB. Difficult to imagine people so heartless that they would deny relief to the children.

I am not sure of their definition of ‘victims’. It may be that 1 million died, and 8 million have health problems due to Chernobyl.. I am still watching video. Does anyone have source material that goes into details on this specifically?

I can only testify about what people around me experienced after Cernobyl 500 km from there. A 2 year old child of family friends died 6 years later. Another kid of family friends had a thyroid disease and the grown up baby whose mother was walking with my mother when I was a baby died of a brain tumor. And my parents were not the social type – they each had 3 family friends. My thyroid is a Geiger counter and I had back stomach aches 6 years after.

Thanks for the first hand testimony Alexa, and very sad to hear what you and the people about have had to go through after the disaster. A Ukranian lady in a dance class I go too told me about Yellow rain after Chernobyl, as did a Japanese lady from Tokyo after fukushima. Did you get any of the Yellow rain as far as 500km’s out?

The radiation was very small. I did not feel any radiation or saw any yellow rain. accumulation by drinking milk and mushrooms is what created most problems. The 2 year old at Cernobyl time died of leukemia. This is why I am able to tell this is much worse than Cernobyl. I saw overgrowth of plants the year Cernobyl happened however didn’t see plant defects in African Violets, ferns.

I’ve seen the cranes picking up objects from #4 and depositing them on the sea side. Probably dismantling because structure is not sturdy enough for a tent. They’ve never released video of the explosion. I would suspect it may have been another mushroom cloud.

In Mozyr, the woman is saying that the medical director at a hospital there said that out of 600 babies born, 230 are in intensive care, due to health problems and birth defects. But, she says, the doctors say that this is NOT a result of Chernobyl radiation.. They say it is the women’s fault, because they all have ‘infections’ or ‘weak immune systems’.

Nope, it definitely cannot be radiation causing this, cause young healthy women all normally have ‘infections’ and ‘weak immune systems’.

That reminds me of the situation in Japan now. With Japanese Chief of medicine Dr Yamashita (AKA – Dr Shitinya) saying positive thinkers are unaffected by radiation. It puts the blame on the victim. If a woman gives birth to a baby with a birth defect, then its her fault for allegedly “getting an infection”, or even more laughably, being “overly concerned” or “negative” about radiation. According to these “scientists” the problems are all just imagination. Interestingly, the poor mother in the video defers to the to the “experts” but states she never had an infection. That was despite her Doctor’s insistence that all the defects and sickness in the babies at the hospital has been caused by mothers having various infections. My impression was that the mother new it was bull but was (probably quite rightly) afraid to state the obvious.

Those Doctors must have had their consciences surgically removed in medical school. I dare say its an entry requirement for medical school in areas that might make the Nuke industry look bad.

Mind you, something similar went on in Southern Utah after the Nevada Nuke tests dusted that in fallout. Every time someone died of cancer Doctors in the area would write it up as something else that looked less radiation related. So this sort of cover up where radiation is concerned has been going on since the start of the Nuke industry. (note, most will die of heart attack and stroke as a result of the fallout rather than cancer)
See Carole Gallagher’s book on the effects of Nuclear testing and the coverup in Southern Utahhttp://www.amazon.com/American-Ground-Zero-Secret-Nuclear/dp/0262071460
Also a fascinating interview with Carole Gallagher by Helen Coldicotthttp://208.184.121.41/index.php/program/35617

It gets worse. Earlier this year I heard the Ukranian govt had given the go ahead for Russia to build a new Nuke plant there. According to that report the Ukraine which is desperately short of money would borrow 12 billion dollars from Russia as part of the deal.

Its a great scam. A country is in desperate need of cash (due to the effects of a nuclear disaster), so lend it money on the condition it spends a large portion of that on buying more Nuclear power stations from the guys lending the money! That’s right, lend them money on condition they “invest” in nuclear power which of course is a guaranteed money loser. They have “invested” in a giant liability! But it gets better, Russia plans to market itself as a nuclear waste dump for the world. So no doubt they can charge the Ukraine to take away the waste as well! Just repeat the cycle until there’s no money left!

My heart goes out to people living in the Ukraine. Looking at it cynically, if the Ukranians are bankrupted, their government will have to keep quiet about the consequences of nuclear power in order to keep borrowing.

The worst part of this is the genetic effect. Each generation has more mutations than the last and most mutations are so minor that natural selection cannot weed them out. But collectively they build up until a species becomes extinct. Nuclear fallout accelerates that genetic decay. Even normal working plants release radiation causing mutations around them. Natural selection can only remove a small portion of mutations since most have no detectable effect. Genetic decay leads all life closer to extinction and Nuke power accelerates that decay.http://creation.com/mutations-are-evolutions-end

I speculate that the developing gefuffle at the NRC (Jaczko et al.) might be the political reaction to news of this development. I assume (perhaps incorrectly) that all governments have known about this before the media picked it up.

my thought here is : when really NOONE is catching up a story worldwide be assured : the top people know something and the silence is globally ordered. That is not “Oh, the president missed the point in the scientific explanation”, it is more: “oh they are f*cked but by now there is nothing anyone can do so shut up (media)” sry for the wording with all the people involved

Hi or-well thats what I was thinking… was it “lost” or was it dismantled piece by piece? it looks better on 12/10 then it did in September. We are just speculating over blurry pictures and shaking videos. Are we seeing progress/clean up and being mislead to think it’s “lost” I can’t tell from whats presented here.

Can someone please explain what they are seeing that is “lost” I don’t get it… it certainly looks BETTER on my puter… maybe the NRC has hacked in and inserting pretty pictures… not lol-ing

sworldpeas and or-well, I also found the photos to be too blurry to draw any conclusions, but I was taking the report at face value, specifically:

“Wall of the south side is falling apart at reactor 4
Assumed that if another aftershock hits it to drop the spent fuel pool hung in the building the entire area in eastern Japan would be too contaminated to be habitat
It was confirmed that the wall of reactor 4 was lost on the south side
At least since 12/5/2011, the wall is missing”.

The situation cries out for further details though, so I imagine we’ll get some. No doubt Admin is all over it.

hi sworldpeas,on my screen the Dec. 10 pic has a more intact-looking horizontal structural member @ rooflevel.The Sept. pic is missing the vertical column on the far right, altho it shows in the Dec. pic.All in all Dec pic looks more like after repairs. Or it’s from before. (Or I’m crazy.) Anyway, the buliding does NOT look good in either pic.

Yep, I’m in agreement with your assessment of “work” having been done with R4 bldg. looking better than Sept. I’m also sticking to my theory that “something” forced them to use the convenient seaside locale for storage of the fuel and also my theory of the use of something not being publicly disclosed that “burns” up the raw fuel rod material leaving shorter-lived isotopes in the process,as opposed to the contamination that would result were it to be allowed to hit the air & burn by itself! All of which points to acts of desperation and/or a response to a change in the condition or risk status. I looked into it and indeed found there to exist “nuclear rockets”,some of which burn standard uranium fuel rods,there’s also references made to nuclear “furnace” and prototype “fusion” reactors which use “magnetic” containment instead of structures because no materials are known that can withstand the heat generated and during trial runs they noted that “plasma” was leaked & flung around unless the magnetic containment was very strong which led to more power being needed to sustain the reaction than it would produce(?) The device with the “green” lights may be part of a powerful electromagnetic device neccessary to allow its current function at Fukushima if my suggestion that it’s being used to “burn” nuclear fuel deemed a threat and NOT to efficiently produce energy is a feasible conclusion??!!It would also address the question raised regarding the origins of “new” detections of Iodine in Tokyo,etc. discovered recently & starting to be found about the same time as the new developments & phases at Fukushima NPP began & were noted in webcam activities that allow conclusions to be drawn in the absence of any “official” word-but I’m not going to start or spread statements claiming that it’s “GAME OVER”~now~PERIOD! I’d like to hang on to my little “ray of hope” that a “miracle” of science or ANY origin remains until “credible” sources say…

cont’d~…otherwise!! Also, my own family’s possibility of survival & limited options all rest on having a timely,detailed “alert” which will set my “aggressive” plan of action related to last-minute “procurement” of gear & neccessary items & basic supplies already known to me-but do NOT relate to any private citizens stocks being looted,although a “false alarm” if taken seriously could cause serious harm to befall me and then my loved ones-in that order! I also wouldn’t want to be the one who posted something that insisted that “the sky has OFFICIALLY fallen” and then have someone who respected my intelligence & intuition read it and decide that they had to act on it immediately to avoid the pain,suffering & horror that the threat being implied as “imminent” could or would be in their best interest to take their own life to avoid the worst effects this disaster could offer! I’d feel pretty horrific if I caused anything like that to happen because of statements of my own invention “before” credible confirmation from Arnie,or Chris Busby,or even our own currently silent govt.leadership-who might try to get in one more session in front of a camera for the sake of their vanity!!?? who knows how it will go down,or when?!! ~PEACE~

Today’s dumb question. How come in a country known for it’s superb optics/camera/and state of the art robotic technology, the best we can get are very fuzzy, shot from an extreme distance, covered with vaseline, video feeds?

That is a data feed off of an IP based camera. The image raster (viewed pixel coverage) is scaled for a low res web feed, the data and frame rates are set bandwidth capabilities of the network and the amount of activity of the entire network influences throughput or ultimate image quality. This feed looks great given the huge distance and massive compression given all to the information in the frame. This is typical and very normal for this application.

I wonder how many hydrogen explosions they have had. We know Reactor one has a new hole and I believe 2 also. I’m sure someone has more info concerning these events. As far as 4 is concerned, they would probably just throw up a tent if they could. What a mess.

Fear is a powerful tool.
THe whole terrorist/911 fear mongering campaign was very successful. Very effective.
It also set the stage for secrecy from “national security” protocols. One stamp suits all needs.
“this information is sensitive and if released will cost you, minimum, your job.”
Lies have worked since the beginning of humanity. Fear is another powerful emotion brought into play.
Bigger corporations is the desired, because they have longer chains of command. “do your job and STFU, watch TV for further details, and be positive.”
It is not just about the lies. My opine is that it will only get worse. ALot to look forward too.

Dear Ruff: You are correct, “it” (the situation, the behavior of the status quo despots and major fiscal stakeholders/board members in nuclear power and weapons industries) will get ever so much worse. People need to be figuring out where are the billionaires and other current decision makers in Japan,the U.S., Europe, Israel, etc., and what are the daily schedules of their nearest billionaires, heads of militaries, and covert orgs (remember fossil fuel industry, high tech, financial are all also covert orgs, their board members are generally criminals as a class) because it really wouldn’t take that many millions of citizens properly focused and strategically targetting they and their information dissemination mechanisms for the public to get a handle on this situation. What would getting “a handle” look like? It would look like we’d (the masses with all our creativity) have enough facts to face this cataclysms and other ongoing injustices with honesty and transparency, which will definitely not occur, leading to the aforementioned “‘it’ will get much worse” earlier mentioned, inevitably. The outcome of “it will get much worse” is actually not inevitable if we start upsetting the applecart though, of course, as several above have mentioned, these powers have no respect for life, at all, and there are dangers involved. Welcome to reality in interesting and dangerous times. Be courageous now; you won’t have to be (meaning collective “you”) as much in the future. But courageous we’ll all have to be far beyond anything our materialistic and subservient lives have heretofore prepared us.

with pictures like this, the whole headline loses most of its impact on me. The more times I encounter senationalism on this site, the less time I spend here. You can’t seriously expect anyone to place any value in this post.

Dear Iam: That side, the south side, is where the SFP is located and we know from previous reports that it’s very leaky to start with. With the status quo of information management, a noose tightening daily as most of us have noticed, it is unlikely that we will any more hear of the R4 SFP collapsing or bursting into flames any more than we hear about actual numbers of FukuDai workers dying or sickening, or what exactly is being burned at that site, etc. Please someone correct me if my bearings are messed up in terms of the R4 SFP being on the south side; but I think this is correct.

funny how people will just jump on a band wagon because something is in print. The emperor has no clothes guys, this picture means nothing, not the end of the world. Please stop insulting people’s intelligence.

I know Arnie Gundersen said there’s no known way to put out the fire that would result if the SFP 4 were to collapse. Why can’t they preemptively dig a deep ditch on whichever side(s) of the building the pool’s contents would be most likely to fall in the event of such a collapse? They could fill it up with water so that, if the spent fuel did fail, at least some of it would be caught by this pool and shielded by the water. They’d still have to figure out a way to cool that water, as I assume it would start to boil within a few hours, but that might be better than just letting it fall into a heap on the ground, in which form they cannot possibly keep water on top of it–in which case it would simply be an unapproachable, unquenchable highly radioactive bonfire.

Would that work, or would the fuel suddenly hitting such water be explosive like the corium hitting ground water?

Iam Yes. Maybe they’re worried about destabilizing the already compromised load bearing aspects of the architecture. Nonetheless, I like your idea. The trench could be structurally reinforced itself (of course, who knows to where the coriums from the other three have wandered off. One wouldn’t want to run into a hot corium digging a trench) out of neutron inhibiting material and filled with neutron inhibiting sand. We could aim for glassification, which would at least minimize emissions, though not below disastrous levels. Imagine if of the seven billion people on the planet, we could get the creative input of even a few percent more than the 1% that have any access to higher education. That 1% is mostly in bed with business in one way or another intentinally, or institutionally, and that includes in higher education.

I think they also normally have to wait that long because the rods are so radioactive when they first come out of the reactor. I think some of it needs to decay away before they can put them into the dry casks.

stock@hawaii.rr.com,
If they are doing the work here wall roof removal it may be because they are reading or have started the removal of rods from SFP !
Seems it would be a top priority to do this under the conditions !

Or-well, in that pool is not only “spent” fuel, but also the full load of fresh fuel which has been temporarily put in from the reactor vessel. Reactor 4 was down for maintenance on 3/11. The fresh fuel is even much more dangerous than the old stuff.

Dear Bread: Believe it or not, the spent fuel is not spent in terms of danger or toxicity compared to original Uranium dioxide reactor fuel, but is about 1,000,000x more radioactive than the original fresh uranium dioxide. I’m not sure how spent fuel compares to MOX fuel or, even more unpleasant what spent MOX fuel is like. MOX fuel starts out already with Plutonium (about 5% or more) in it. There are layers of double speak in some of the standard terms used in the nuclear industry. The spent fuel, unfortunately, continues to grow more radioactive for at least 200,000 years after it has been removed from the reactor core, which is the reason that every speck of it needs to be stored in neutron inhibiting metal, neutron cascade inert gas devoid of either O2 or H2O. The plutonium in spent fuel makes it extremely reactive with the environment and liable along with the presence of Uranium 235 (neutron emitter) to cause prompt criticalities, as we see in corium, if the temperature is too high, or in any condition beyond the narrow parameters of cooling spent fuel found only in normal circumstances.

[Translate] It is unlikely that the portion of unit 4 that is no longer there fell off. More likely based on looking at images it was cut off. The marks where the remaining unit begins are clean breaks like they were cut rather than broke off. There is no rubble on top of the spent fuel pool. If all of this fell away during a quake in recent days there would be a pile of considerable rubble on top of the spent fuel pool. If you inspect the photos closely it is a nice clean cut and very tidy in the manner the rubble was cleaned off. TEPCO did mention in earlier reports they were going to try to remove rubble at both units 3 and 4. Unit 3 has been plagued …http://www.simplyinfo.org/?p=4324

xdrfox, thanks for the article. The real question is, where are they dumping this debris? Someone posted recently an agreement between Japan and the US for the US to dump decommissioned nuclear power plants into the ocean.

Watcher
Thanks for rational talk. As I read down the column it does begin to get more and more. While most things on this site have been correct we must remember this all extrapolation. More data will be forth coming I am sure.
Meantime, hug your kids and do at least 10 good things a day.

I think what is confusing in the headline is the word “confirmed”–what has been confirmed, and confirmed by whom? It leads one to think that TEPCO has confirmed the fact of such a collapse. However, it seems that the “confirmation,” such as it is, is simply the fact that the pictures show fewer wall panels and less debris on the building in the later picture. So a change in the state of building #4 is confirmed, but the cause of that change (and by extension it’s significance for the building’s structural integrity) has not actually been “confirmed.”

This change does appear to have happened around the time of that an aftershock occurred, but of course that does not necessarily mean that it was caused by the aftershock (i.e., post-hoc fallacy). Alternatively, maybe a strong aftershock at the plant woke up some decision-maker there to the reality that they REALLY need to get moving on finding a way to extract those spent rods. (But perhaps that hypothesis gives too much credit to TEPCO.)

Entropy, yep, I agree, hugs and good deeds. I don’t agree with over exaggerating the situation. This is a place to go to for information that can help make decisions on how to proceed in the coming days. Maybe I am naive to use it that way, and maybe articles that have no validity like this one will convince me to forget about enenews.

I can clearly see that the front wall (the wall closest to the camera) is missing in the most recent picture. The reason you can see beams in the more recent picture is not because they were added, but because the wall that was blocking them is now missing. If you look at the before picture, you will see on the left hand side of the building two white square panels on the top with one more panel underneath the two top panels. In the after picture, there is only one on the top and one on the bottom. From that you can tell where the wall used to be.

Remember the early reports months ago that the reactor 4 building was leaning? There was a lot of back and forth speculation here “yes it is”, “no, it’s the camera angle” and so forth. Lots of blurry photos. Lots of denial. Eventually the story proved to be true.

Other speculative stories here have turned out to be false.

In the absence of mainstream media or government (verifiable) information, this is all we have to go by. You’ll have a good story to tell your grandchildren, either way, as long as the unthinkable isn’t, um, you know….

The point is it is all speculation as TEPCO are a lying bunch of criminals. Pictures are grainy because TEPCO doesn’t want good pictures available. However we know that in March they were downplaying accident, calling it a 3 or 4, while we know now they knew it was a melt through and should be classified a 10.

The design of these reactors are such that the spent fuel pool is mounted on the roof of a nuclear reactor built on a fault line.

Designed in the 60′s, they felt that a permanent solution to store spent fuel would happen soon. But it hasn’t to this day. Transfering spent fuel to dry casks is expensive so TEPCO has dragged its bum on that. Therefore, spent fuel pools have had racks added to store more spent fuel then what original designers envisioned. Maintaining the spent fuel pools cooling is critical and could be the real safety issue of Fukushima.

1.) The wall did not come down. They just took the rubble away.
2.) These buildings are not engineered as a living house. The outer walls are not vital for its stability.
3.) And yes, a collapse would be fatal. I hope they have enough sand and helicopters at the site to be prepared, just in case.

But I don’t believe in the risk of a collapse. Thee buildings consist of incredible amounts of concrete and steel. I am much more afraid of the three reactor cores with unknown state and location.

(Being facetious) They loaded it up on trucks and these trucks have been going from town to town all this time, but nobody wants to accept the mess. This is the situation wherever there is nuclear waste: nobody wants it.

If you go down to the video with “12/5/2011 the wall is gone” above it, you will see clearly at 1:40 in the video, that particular video was taken before the wall was taken away (or fell or whatever).

The video immediately below that shows it with two top story walls and section of roof removed. You can see that at 1:03 in that video (I haven’t looked further on than that yet)

If you pause both videos at those points and then expand each one to take up the whole screen, you can see the situation pretty clearly.

It looks most likely some kind of controlled removal of those walls. I don’t know why they would do that, but that’s what it looks like. It appears that no further part of the floor was lost, but only part of the walls and roof. At least that is how it looks to me. Please correct me if I am wrong, I am looking at this on a laptop late at night.

But just the way it looks, I think its more likely the walls and roof were deliberately removed. The roof looked like a hazzard for anyone trying to work there, so perhaps that was deliberately taken away and the walls ended up coming with it? That is the only explanation I can come up with. Although it is possible that part of the structure collapsed. After all, plenty of the rest of the building had already collapsed.

Either way, the floor does not look to have changed, and presumably its the floor that counts when it comes to holding the fuel pool up. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

Whatever the case, yes, a section of the roof has been removed back into the building and its actually ended up making the roof look tidier and safer to work under. Top floor of walls disappeared back to what is left of the roof.

I admit it!
I really can’t tell what I’m looking at in these cams. But: “What do you mean that the South wall of #4 has collapsed, gone away, whatever?

To me, the vids clearly show (from N to S) #1, reassuringly shrouded in it’s “ho see ems” tent. Then I see #2, the building which has always been the least damaged in appearance. Then we have< <<
what is left of #3, which is virtually nothing more than a few uprights and I-bars, nothing else, no walls at all. Then we have the remains of #4, which still looks quite more there there than #3!

you know… first we had the mysterious glowing night light that seems to have been a work light. Now we have this story that seems to be a clean up in process… thats twice that WE went through this fire drill. I’m not hanging around for the 3rd time. I take this situation far too seriously to be constantly lead down a road of speculation that dead ends like a bridge to nowhere.

However it does look like the SPF in #3 likely has fallen down – which is probably the source of the campfire we’ve seen the last week or so.

The challenge with the SPF in #4 and possibly some of the fuel in #3 is that it is not all spent fuel.

#4 had an entire core’s worth of brand new fuel ready to go into the reactor. I don’t know for sure, but I’m thinking it is probably MOX.

So It’s going to be a really hot, ugly campfire when that one goes. And it will, it’s just a matter of time. People can’t seem to get their heads around the size and danger of this thing. This is 100 tons of nuke fuel stored in a pool 150 feet up in the air. There’s simply no way to get it out of there. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit to see them start digging it out of there with the crane and dumping it into the ocean.

“The United States secretly sought Japan’s support in 1972 to enable it to dump decommissioned nuclear reactors into the world’s oceans under the London Convention, an international treaty being drawn up at the time.”

Such a great group of truly informed people interacting and sharing here… many post / reflect insight, opinions and ideas with background supporting and further extending the reach of our understanding. I appreciate that greatly! I am thankful to come here and spent time assimilating with everyone…

Can’t they have a tank of water on a flatbed truck they can load it in? Perhaps a small tank (about10,000 gallons), with a circulating cooling system and heat exchanger. They can ship it back to the manufacturer and get a refund.

Response to A GreenRoad posted video. I watched this film in its entirety. Thank you! It is really hard to understand the refusal to incorporate new data into existing radiation models. I see here the obstructionist demeanor of those who believe themselves to possess the absolute knowledge in the face of accumulative knowledge showing otherwise. What will it take for these people to change their minds? I feel as though science has now been hijacked by corporate interests and anything detrimental to their interests will be silenced. Don’t these people have to wake up in the morning and look themselves in the mirror? I can’t see how they possibly can. Do they have children or grandchildren? The more I read the more I uncover. Greg Palast’s new book paints a scary picture of business as usual in both the petroleum industry and the nuclear industry. What do we as individuals do?

That is a data feed off of an IP based camera. The image raster (viewed pixel coverage) is scaled for a low res web feed, the data and frame rates are set bandwidth capabilities of the network and the amount of activity of the entire network influences throughput or ultimate image quality. This feed looks great given the huge distance and massive compression given all to the information in the frame. This is typical and very normal for this application.

I don’t think it’s falling apart but being taken apart. After the cams first went down and came back up on or about 12/1/11, the entire area looked to me, and still does, that the area from at least left side #2 over to the other side of #4 collectively sank and that’s probably why the cranes are/were there to take stuff away so it doesn’t fall down. All of the other stuff since then with all of the reactors makes sense too from a sink. I think though since the result that everyone seems to have concluded about the level of radioactivity now is beyond something to do about, which is good and hope that’s the case, more people should pay attention to the questions that Mr. Gundersen asks. xdrfox posted it yesterday too and “no one is looking it that”

The reactor cores themselves contain less than 100 tons of fuel, Resnikoff noted.

The fuel had been moved from reactor No. 4′s core to its spent-fuel pool recently, so “that fuel is relatively fresh and hotter, thermally,” Resnikoff explained. “So it’s not surprising that when the water [was] no longer circulating that the water was actually boiled off in a zirconium exothermic reaction, that the zirconium burned” (occurring at about 1,800 degrees Celsius).

SUBMIT YOUR NEWS TIPS

Your identity will not be made public unless you request it

LIVE FEEDS

Receive Occasional Enenews Newsletters

sending...

Name

E-mail

SUPPORT ENENews

ENENews receives no funding from anyone or anything, except 1) People who donate via the button below, and 2) Google, who pays for the two ad spots. Thanks to all who have donated or are planning on doing so, it's nice to know people appreciate your work.